Google wants to stop white male dominance

Google has decided to do something about the fact that most of its 50,000 employees are white men.

According to the outfit, of its overall worldwide workforce, 70 percent are male, while in the company’s tech department it’s even more pronounced: only 17 percent of staff are women.

In the US, six out of ten ‘Googlers’ are white and three out of ten are Asian. Just three percent are Hispanic and two percent are black.

Google has said that it is publishing its figures because it is not where it wants to be when it comes to diversity and wants to fully address the matter.

Laszlo Bock, senior vice president of people operations at Google, said the outfit had been reluctant to publish numbers about the diversity of the Google workforce. However that was wrong as it was time to be candid.

“We’re the first to admit that Google is miles from where we want to be – and that being totally clear about the extent of the problem is a really important part of the solution,” he said.

Apple, Twitter and Amazon have also been criticised lately for a lack of women or people from ethnic minorities in high positions.

It is not clear what Google plans to do about the matter after putting its hands up. Our guess is that they will have to bring in some form of positive discrimination programme until the problem goes away. But it will take a while before the right man for the job is a woman.